U.N.: Four Million in Syria Will Need Aid in Early 2013
The number of people inside Syria in need of emergency humanitarian aid is expected to rise to more than four million early next year, while refugee numbers will soar to 700,000, the head of the U.N.'s humanitarian efforts said Friday.
"In the early new year... we're predicting that the numbers of people in need will exceed four million, up from 2.5 million," John Ging, who heads the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told reporters in Geneva.
"This will just continue to grow in the terms of humanitarian suffering."
Ging, who was speaking after a humanitarian forum on Syria, also said the number of refugees in neighboring countries was likely to grow from more than 400,000 today to around 700,000 -- a number already calculated into aid needs.
After various U.N. aid organizations presented their views on the situation to potential donor countries, Ging said the numbers he mentioned were "absolutely... not the worst case scenario."
"But it is an appalling scenario that should inspire and motivate" politicians and those in power to double their efforts to end the near 20-month conflict, he said.
The U.N. refugee agency said earlier that more than 11,000 Syrians had fled into neighboring countries in the past 24 hours alone.
Source: Agence France Presse
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